The long, long trip from hell!

28 Jun 2009

We left Taraz around 3:30pm on Saturday, June 27th. Wayne still wasn't feeling well, I was starting to feel poorly as well (sore throat, ears hurt)and Ernur's car wasn't feeling well either. I quit counting the number of times we stopped to add water and antifreeze to the radiator. He called Zema to have her tell us what was going on and to make sure we weren't worried about getting to Almaty. Considering our flight didn't leave until 7am the next morning my only concern was not getting stranded on the side of the road in the middle of no where. He finally got the car fixed at the gas station in Kordai. It took 8 hrs with all the stops. He left us at the airport at 11:30pm. We camped out on a bench at the far end of the terminal until it was time to check in for our flight on BMI (the airline from hell!)

They never did post a check-in time so knowing the issues we had in Heathrow we decided to get in line early. The passport check let us through and we headed to the checkin counter. They had an eticket for Wayne but the one for me was locked. The showed we both had reservations but only one ticket. He asked if I had my bording pass stub from the London trip which I happened to still have. It had my name on it but came up as being Wayne. We were about to buy another ticket just to get me on the plane which would have meant I would have to go back out and downstairs to the ticket counter. God was with me and the manager gave the checkin agent permission to print me a new boarding pass and they would work it out with my travel agent later via email. He, however, put me 3 rows back. I guess he couldn't issue my original seat because the ticket was locked (whatever that means). Fortunately the plane wasn't full. We opted to keep our newly assigned seats since it gave us more room. I slept most of the way but Wayne says he wasn't able to sleep very well.

We are currently sitting in Heathrow Airport waiting for our British Airways flight home. We figured since the tickets were purchased through BA we wouldn't have a problem with my boarding pass in London. Wrong! He couldn't locate an eticket for me. Just Wayne. Fortunately I had the receipt from my agent showing I had paid for two round trip tickets. Again a call to a supervisor. God was again with us because she said to go ahead and issue a boarding pass and note a comment in the computer regarding my eticket and they would work it out with my agent later. Eldo is going to be getting a great deal of international calls this week about my ticket.

Fortunately both of us seem to be feeling better although very tired. We have had a bite to eat and rehydrated. I hear the stores calling my name and some British pounds saying they need to be spent because we plan on using Lufthansa for the next trip even if it is more expensive. We don't want to have to deal with these types of issues with Lukas in tow on the next trip.

Time to shop!
Lynda and Wayne